"In the year 1811, you granted me the ordinance, which enabled me to
proceed to measures necessary to supply your City with Water. I received it in July 1811, but the
very site on which the works were to be erected, was dependant on an Act of Congress
relinquishing any possible right of the United States to the ground. However, I relied on the
liberality of Congress, and applied by your permission to that honorable body. The ground was
not granted, and this delay, as well as the change of the location of the Engine House was greatly
injurious to me. But I proceeded with my works and had already sent to New Orleans men, parts
of the machinery when war was declared in 1812."

Design of a pier to cover the suction pipe of the pump for supplying
water to the City of New Orleans, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, January 29, 1819. The site of the
City's first water works is now a French Market pocket park named in honor of the great
architect who lost his life in service to the Crescent City.

[City Surveyor's Office Records]

The tragic saga of the attempt by Benjamin Henry Latrobe to supply New Orleans with a water
works system continued for almost another three years before it ended with Latrobe's own death
from yellow fever in 1820. Noted as the architect for the capitol building in Washington,
Latrobe came to the Crescent City to complete the work started by his son Henry, also a victim
of the fever. Although the plan shown above indicates that the water works was in place by
early 1819, the plant was not completed and operational until later in the 1820s.

It still amazes some visitors that our primary source of drinking water is the Mississippi. But
much happens to the brown muddy liquid that flows into the city limits before so much as a drop
reaches our glasses. In the "good old days," drinking water from the river was a bit sandy, to say
the least (who knows what invisible creatures were swimming around in it as well). Today, the
Sewerage and Water Board's modern purification plants use a variety of mechanical and
chemical treatments to confect a clean, clear product that even manages to win taste tests!